The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-08-23
THE CORSET IS QUEEN.
About the Waist-Embracer That La
dies Love

ohN AAipOi OchNO bbdU III u COPY OIL
the London Telegraph, lately over, is worth
producing:
On recent Thursday, according to that
journal, an inquest was held on a single
woman 81 years of age, residing in the
Gloucester road, Regents Park, who had
died suddenly on the preceding Sunday even
ing as she was leaving Park Chapel The
house surgeon of the Northwest London
Hospital, who had made an examination of
the body, testified before the Coroner that
she was woman who had laced very tightly
In fact she must at all times have found
ordinary respiration task of extreme diff.
Guilty, and ultimately the lungs, not being
allowed free play, blood vessel burst, pro-
ducing syncope and death The jury
returned verdict in accordance with the
evidence, and we are entitled to ask whether
the most recent addition to the list of vic
tins of tight lacing will have any influence
In staying the prevalence of barbarous and
mischievous fashion. 1t is much, however,
TO be feared that all the homilies of the
medical faculty, reiterated over and over
again, will fail to persuade ladies that tight
laclng is sure means of running their
health, and very often has fatal results;
while it will be quite as difficult to PERSUADE
the fair sex that the vast majority of sensi
bic men look upon an "hour-glassp or
lous. The instrument of construction applied
to the chest was an invention of depraved
vanity, with a view of giving to the
female figure supposed lightness which
1t ought not to possess, or to conceal some
deformities, which stays very frequently
aggravate instead of allaying.
RoUssEAU's INFLUENCE.
Jean Jacques Rousseau, with all the power
of his genius and all the warmth of the
interest which he took in youth, exposed the
lamentable corruption of taste which asserts
that the figure is excellent in proportion to
the waist The philosopher of Geneva exer-
cised more social influence, perhaps, in his
time than any writer in Europe, and for a
while stays went out of fashion in France.
Stiff corsets were still worn by the ladies of
the old court; but sensible mothers came to
a common agreement that their daughters
should subject themselves to this voluntary
punishment at as late a period as possible,
and not until their wedding day were they
allowed to wear stays.
IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
The Revolution swept away the corset al
together, as we'll as hoop petticoats, but
stays again made their appearance toward
the end of the First Empire. A very harm
less affair, scarcely broader than the "fascie
mamillaresn of the Romans, was the imperial
bodies; for waists were then worn Excess
sively short, and the stays were without
buskS stiff pieces of whalebone or steel
plates. Modified, however, as they were,
the strong common sense of Napoleon re-
volted against the reintroduction of the gar
ment. "Corvisart,n said the ruler, whose
business it was to know everything, to his
physician, ''the corset is coquetry of the
worst taste; it tortureS women and maltreatS
their progeny; it means frivolity; it heralds
decadence.
ONCE MORE LA MODE.
These words were full of sagacity, but
when the mysterious DEGREES of fashion
DEGREES which are as occult as those of fate
brought about the revival of long waists,
tight stays became once more the mode. and
the female chest was bruised by that dread
full instrument of torment the steel Dusk,
which had originally been brought into
France, in 1882, by Catherine de Medici The
busk was a long, fiat, rigid strip of wood or
whalebone, and sometimes of metal. The
old Surgeons Roderick and Ambrose Pare
had invelghed against it; Montaigne and
Riolau had laughed at it; the Able Outlet
had preached against it, and the Emperor
Joseph had striven to drive it out of Austria
by ordaining that all women leading i'm
moral lives should wear stays with stiff
buskS. Medical warnings, satire, sermons,
edicts of police he'd all been in vain. In
the present epoch, although tight lacing is
fearfully prevalent, and is Staying its thou
sands of silly votaries every year, the busk
has ceased to be an instrument of tor
ture.
THE OLD BUsX AND THE NEW.
1t is an integral part of the corset, where
as the old busk, which was covered with
channels leather, could be made to slide in
and out in a vertical tuck in the front of the
STAYS. The modern Dusk is fastened and
Id tl,., u h. 81
Mexican saddle: it is made of very flexible
steel, which should give to every movement
of the body, and, per SO, it is wholly in
nocuols portion of the corset. The mischief
and the peril are at the back. Fifty years
ago a London stay-maker named Mills in
PRODUCED an improved formation of stay
making, the texture elastic, and wholly bail
ishing upright pieces; but the greatest of
evils escaped and continues to escape rem
edy Nearly all stay makers render the
structure of the corset sufficiently mar
row to allow of its being drawn at the
back far too tight for the health of tho
wearer
THE PERMANENT LACING.
Sensible ladies leave the permanent lacing
of the interval at the back of their stays I'M
touched. That interval, according to high
authority, should not be less than an inch in
breadth, so as to leave the spinal column I'M
covered DN UHc COISeb. IEtlleS nOWeN6T,
who lack common sense, strain, tug, pull and
haul at the lacing at the back of their stays,
or they hold ON TO a horizontal bar put up in
their dressing-room while their maids tug,
pull and haul at the stay -laces until the re-
ouisite ''hour-glass' or wasp" effect is pro-
duced Are there any other results, it
may be asked, from this elegant process of
the female forms There are
good many, and we will venture to enumer
ate a few.
EFFECTS OF TIGHT LACING.
On the authority of the most eminent ply
sicians and surgeons Of the last two genera
tions, it may be stated that in the head tight
lacing produces giddiness, headache, pain in
the eyes, ringing in the ears and bleeding ut
the nose Habitual tight lacing will pro-
woke that most undesirable addition to the
female complexion, a red nose. Tight lac
ing is quite as nlschievous in the region Of
the thorax, TO which it gives false support,
the development of the natural
1t displaces the bones, deranges
the circulation, induces scirrhus in the MANI
mary glands and ultimately cancer and it is
a toierably sure provocation of lung disease,
palpitation of the heart and water i'll the
chest.
In the abdominal region tight lacing may
be reckoned upon with tolerable confidence
to bring about loss Of appetite, squeamish
ness, indigestion, induration of the liver,
drops, aud rupture. Campin
closely associated tight lacing with squint-